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So yeah 22 now and finally found something I would like to go for and that is nursing, salary seems more than decent and the 3/7 work days just won me over.

I'll be living with my parents and have decent savings at this point, considering not working depending on how tough I find school. Will be going to community college for prereqs and tbd university after that.

Taking that assessment exam for community college was a bit yeah ... my math skills are just terrible at this point and I always found it easy ( did not brush up for it ).

Anyways is anyone in a similar situation, meaning going back to school after taking some time after high school ? How do you think that affected you or whatnot, tbh im not too worried about the academic side of it for prereqs at least, always been top of my class in everything and science and math specially come naturally to me. Not to say I don't expect a rough start but yeah.

Quick bullet points about things I like in this career:

you work 3 or 4 days a week
salary is in the 60-80k range
1:10 male female ratio, wut
your career advances quicker as male and hospitals hunt you down unlike female counterparts at this point
obamacare, will force people to pay for medicine .....
10 percent of RN are males, 10 percent of those are under 30 = I am the Farking 1% wut, thats not even accounting I am bilingual.

I dont know much about nursing as a career, as it is not a career I pursue, but I have a cousin who is a male and graduated this year from nursing school. He seems to enjoy his job, and has gotten employment fairly quickly at a hospital.( granted he worked in a hospital with a minor prior graduating )

I also don't know how to go about the break from high school, but I'd just recommend taking a few classes first semester to get a feeling for your threshold and how well you can manage classes...
My major is COHPA pre-clinical, and I think theres a pretty high chance of employment and success in the health field. I might end up changing it though, still dunno what I wanna do.

My 2 cents

One of my good friend is in Nursing, he can confirm the 1:10 male/female ratio lol

Same. My best friend studies to become a nurse, and there are 4 male and more than 40 female students.

A friend of mine is in the nursing program in my university and it is ridiculous how many females to male there are in the program. Its like Engineering for women

I went to college after taking a break after high school. It didn't really make a difference with only a couple years off.

Obamacare is forcing insurance companies to cover more people. That's why the medical field is going to expand. I know quite a few people who have attempted a nursing program - be warned that it is intense and it's not easy. So if you're looking to get into it just because there's a lot of chicks you're gonna have a bad time.

Depending on where you work, nurses can have crazy shifts too. You might be working midnight to noon or something.

What are ya studying? In ChemE its not that bad in my school. In a class of 80 there are about 20 girls. Then again that was freshmen year

On my college it's like 4:1 male to female ratio, and I'm studying electrical engineering.

Embedded Systems engineering
80 freshmen -> 1 girl.
it's more or less like that for all the engineering types in my school except for IPO (Industrial Product design) which is not actually engineering. It's handicrafts with very a small technical touch.

If it wasn't for the IPO newbs, the engineering department, all courses and years together, would probably be about 20 females... (from probably 400+ students).
With IPO it's probably about 45-50?

That sucks. What year are you in right now? And how are you holding up? Sort of freaking out about taking physical chemistry next semester lol, people keep telling me its mind boggling confusing

finished first year and got all my points for the year.
Holding up reasonably well, though I should order an arduino and practice at home. I mostly did software application programming rather than microcontroller programming :S. So it doesn't feel like I did anything that's really part of the course lol.
It's quite do-able if you can force yourself out of procrastination. Sadly I cannot T_T.
Goal for the year: procrastinate procrastination.

Lots of cool info, thanks. Also I keep hearing about the difficulty of the program both ways which makes a final conclusion somewhat difficult. I am wondering how actual nursing students feel about doing asn to bsn as opposed to straight to bsn. Considering straight to bsn at this point since it will be less pressure for those first 2 years but if you fail Uni thats kinda it, you only have asn as an option left.

ASN = associates rather than bachelors? That's always an option - community college is cheaper anyway (if yours offers the program). You'll get a taste of the program too, so you can decide if you want to do something else or stick with it after two years.

I have a male friend that's studying nursing atm. He recently told me about a class on cancers he has and how that one day the class was about breast cancer. So yeah, he told me they were all feeling their breasts, bending over and practicing for searching for a tumor, and he stood there in boner induced awe as 25 girls touched their tits. But yeah on a serious note nursing is not too bad, except for the first year where you have to do Personal Support Worker stuff, which is basically cleaning dirty dirty thangs.

It's a fucking miserable job. If not for the money, I wouldn't do it. Although 3/7 days sounds terrific, you might take those words back once you're actually working in the field. I'd rather have 5 days per week instead of doing long hours. In a lot of cases, an 8 hour shift can mean 8 hours or 9 or 10 or 16. I'm not saying it doesn't feel good (sometimes) to help out people but in reality, I do it because it's my job. I think I've turned into a more negative person because of nursing. The type of people you will encounter will vary; you'll find a few nice people, some demanding "VIP"s, medicaid leeches who think they're in a 5-star hotel, and fuckers who simply will call the lawfirm the first chance they get. You will meet people who are so naive you'd think they don't believe they or their loved ones would die someday. You'll see some very depressing situations like dying infants with mothers who don't want them or people around our age with traumatic brain injury and their parents or spouse won't simply let them die; people who don't realize what a fucked up state their loved ones are in. Americans are so obsessed with prolonging life that they forget about the quality of it sometimes.

The money is good and job security is definitely there but it's a very stressful job. You risk your own health and legal standing everyday. One small misstep now can come back to bite you in the ass in 5 years. You'll find State laws and facility policies that are completely bullshit but you have to abide by -- some of them are physically impossible. There are some absurdly unfair laws in place that can land you in jail for things that you couldn't possibly predict or prevent. Your goodwill and hard work will mean nothing to a lot of people but you have to stand there and smile.

I've been working as a nurse for about 2 years now and I'm already thinking about taking another course in college. I'll always have my license to fall back on in case my plan doesn't work out. I do a good job at work and I try my best to be pleasant to everyone there -- including people I dislike -- but after a while, it takes a huge toll on my health. Both mental and physical.

Good luck.

(Sorry if I sound very discouraging and bitter but I thought I'd give you a taste of how the work is really like. I trained some new nurses who only lasted for a few weeks before they quit and some of these people really love their job but are unable to stand the work. Never mind the blood and rotting flesh, it's interacting with people that drives people away from it.)

Really glad to hear from some1 actually doing this, appreciated. Mind sharing a bit about how you found school as well since that's the first thing I'll have to tackle ?

The people part of this career of course I can't say for sure but I think this is one of the things I have the most confidence about doing well. I don't care too much for tragedies but I'm resourceful for the patient and I think that's a decent enough formula.

BTW if not nursing what are thinking of doing ? My second choice ATM is pharmacology but that sounds mindnumbing and memorizing shit I don't care for, for a living is one of the things I hate the most. It being less taxing on your body is the only thing I could say is better but again a lot less exciting.

I actually don't care much for tragedies since I always have people dying on me lol. Some people I can resuscitate, some we just let go. It's part of life but I wanted to share what I've seen. The only aspect of the "people" part that I don't like would be dealing with demanding fuckers on Medicaid. Those VIP-types who think nurses are glorified house servants..especially ignorant, worthless, tax dollar-leeching scum. I hate them!

Schooling:
The prerequisites are alright. If you're going to a community college, try to get 90+ on all your prerequisite subjects which is actually not that hard to do. Anatomy & Physiology I + II, Chemistry, English 101 + 102, etc -- just always be on your toes. As for math, I only had to take Medical Dosage which is basically learning a few formulas, a little conversion table between different systems, and dimensional analysis (technically algebra). Once you're in the program, learn to dedicate your hours studying. I was a poor listener in class but I read entire books and wasted countless sharpies/highlighters writing my notes all over them. Develop a routine and stick to it. Nursing exams are based more on critical thinking -- the memorization part is the basic.

As for alternatives, I would definitely look into becoming a Physical/Occupational Therapist. Good money and the people you're going to work with usually have a much better attitude and just overall a better crowd (generally speaking). In my case, I'm sick of people so I might just go with Vet Tech. A lot less pay compared to nursing but I can always do 1 or 2 days of nursing and work as a full-time vet tech if I really need the money.

You're working in NYC right inky? I'm sure being in one of the rudest cities in the world doesn't help.

I know people who work in other states. It's the same shit, different location. Here we got ghetto-ass VIP-wannabe medicaid scum and in some places like SC, they got trailer trash redneck VIP-wannabe medcaid scum. "I want it done raaaaiiight NOW! Or else Imma' turn deez place up on its heeaaaad! GIMME YOUR NAME! LEMME SEE YER I. D.!" (an example of shit I've heard from people). Oh, Farking Christ. Sometimes I wonder if the money they pay me is enough for me to take shit from these worthless, oxygen-stealing meat sacks.

Another thing I hate about this healthcare system: you'd think being a healthcare worker and all, we would automatically have health insurance for free. NOPE! Unless I join the union and pay about $12,000/year, I'm not getting shit. Even though they take out 35% of my weekly pay for taxes. Taxes that pay for some of the scumbags we take care of. The same scumbags who threaten to sue us if they find something they don't like. Fuckin 'murica.

(You see what a bitter person nursing has made me. )

Breathe in Calm.. Breathe out Stress/Bitterness.

The air is polluted with stress in these workplaces. That and airborne pathogens. Also the smell of feces, urine, and gangrenous flesh.